Preserving the writing of BB for posterity. Another project of the AntiPorn Activist Network.

Originally published April 13, 2006

Ok, after yesterday’s hiatus I’m ready to tackle the next part of Porn Week. This post is going to be two-fold. The first part of it is going to deal with how women are affected who have nothing to do with men. The women in our society who are lesbian for example, or the ones who choose to be single, or the ones who choose to stay as far away from men as they can.

The second part of this will discuss the affects that porn has on female consumers. The women who watch it, what harm it causes the women who choose to watch it.

Well, after Tuesdays post I figure that a few of you may have been thinking, “Well, that’s just fine and dandy BB. But what of the women who aren’t with men at all?” It’s a fine question because there are many women out there who aren’t with men, who choose to stay single or who love other women. Porn affects them as well.

Women who choose to stay single are affected by the pornography use of perfect strangers. For example, Holla Back just did a story about how a normal woman is affected by the consumption of porn by complete strangers. Note how the man had a video camera.

And this one isn’t the first. There are others out there, lots of women who have had porn referenced to them by complete strangers. I, personally, have had a complete stranger come up to me when I was in a library and ask me if I liked to watch porn. Many of us have experienced the boy in school who would come up to us with his copy of Penthouse that he lifted from his father and show it to us. Even as adults this is not uncommon. I’ve had friends who were chased from a library or computer lab because the man next to them was looking at pornography on the computers. Or worse yet, he and his friends were looking at porn and creating a hostile environment that she couldn’t work in.

What about the jurors on the Haidl rape case? They watched a video of a child being raped with bottles, pool cues and lit cigarettes but when they were told that the girl wanted to be a ‘porn star’ suddenly there was reasonable doubt. The very allegation that she wanted to do this cast reasonable doubt and resulted in a hung jury. Who knows if she had ever said such a thing? Perhaps she didn’t, it’s possible that she never even saw pornography until she saw her own rape on the television. But yet, pornography affected her. It affected her intimately as that first trial was hung. The mere mention of an allegation helped give the jury reasonable doubt.

But it gets better, women who come into only glancing contact with men are still exposed to their pornography use. Take the women (and there are MANY of us who fall into this category) who have been exposed to pornography at the workplace. These are women who oftentimes have nothing at all to do with pornography on their own. And yet, they are subjected to it at work as a form of harassment. Men, talking about strippers and porn stars, about x rated internet sites that they’ve found. I vividly remember the last job I had, I worked in Logistics and one of my co-workers had a thong clad woman on his desktop calendar. I also remember a conversation with a man who told me I looked like the stripper he saw last night. Who had the gall to tell me that I should be a stripper. Where would he have gotten the idea that this was an appropriate thing to say to a woman? That this was a flattering thing to say to a woman?

Pornography is still being forced down women’s throats in the workplace, on the street and in stores. Complete strangers, men whom she doesn’t know, will ask her about porn, show her porn, pin it up at desks and show it to them in public. To recall another story about my own experiences with this sort of thing I have to go back to when I was around 22. I was in my car, driving through town. The town had a series of stoplights and I somehow managed to hit them all. I was in the left lane, and a truck was in the right. The men noticed me at the first stoplight in a series of about five of them.

The weather was warm and I was enjoying my day with my car windows rolled down. At the first few stoplights the men in the truck next to me were hollering and winking at me. By time I got to the third one they had pulled a pornographic magazine from somewhere in the truck and were waving explicit images at me from their window. The more I ignored them the more they screamed.

They hollered to me, “Hey! You look like HER!” while holding the centerfold aloft. I leaned over and rolled up my window, ignoring them. However, they weren’t done and they followed me through several of the stoplights until I turned left and got away from them. Where would they have gotten the idea that a woman would want to be shown pornography? Where would they have gotten the idea that it was acceptable to keep pushing even after the woman has rolled her window up and is actively trying to ignore you?

This is not particularly uncommon. Women, who otherwise have nothing to do with pornography, being harassed by it and with it.

“But BB, that’s just a group of assholes! I don’t do any of that so I’m not adding to this problem”. Perhaps. But here’s the thing, the studies have repeatedly shown that men who view porn are changed by it. Men, who are otherwise ‘nice’, ‘caring’ men, begin to get the idea that women are pieces of meat and THIS translates into women being harassed more and more on the street.

Sure, maybe you don’t hold porn out of your car windows to harass women with it, but we know, all too well, that when guys scream at us, “Nice ASS!!!!” where they’re getting it from. We know exactly where they got the idea that I am the sum of my parts and that my parts were open to inspection and perusal at any time by them.

But it goes even farther than that, porn influences the reality of men and how they perceive women. Most of them won’t admit it when they’re actively using porn, but I haven’t met a man yet who hasn’t acknowledged this fact after they stop using it.

Nobody wants to admit that they are being programmed by something. We like to think of ourselves as clear-thinking autonomous individuals. Yet, every time we masturbate to an image we are reinforcing that image with chemicals.

Porn leaves a lasting chemical imprint in the brain.

And when the images of porn have been repeatedly reinforced by your own actions of masturbation then your outlook and how you view women in general changes. Suddenly, women are little more than ‘eye candy’, objects that are available for the male gaze each and every time they leave their homes.

From fat women, who are measured against the porn standard and then criticized openly and sometimes viscously by men. To thin women who are measured against the porn standard and subjected to disgusting comments by men. All the way down to the man who ‘just’ stares at the women in line at the grocery store. She is being affected by the porn use of the man she doesn’t know. Women become simply objects, and their existence is a testament to his ‘right’ to stare at her ass, or her breasts or her legs or whatever part he fetishizes about her. Pornstitution is step one in reducing women to body parts for the consumption of the male gaze.

The man in line behind you who stares at you until you’re squirming and uncomfortable, he is another example. The complete stranger at the store who feels that it’s his right to engage you in conversation and is pissed off when you respond in a non-porn style way and tell him to go away. These men have been affected by pornography. The man who undresses you with his eyes, or the men who criticize you openly about your legs or your hips. These are men who have taken the message that women are objects to be judged by men to heart.

You don’t think that men are affected? Well, once again we’ll have a look at some of the stuff that OAG has collected from a message board that does ‘reviews’ on pornographic pictures.

Here are a few comments I’ve lifted from that page for the purposes of this post.

Great Gonzagas

those are huge knockers and a butter face. but hey, they’d be handy if she had a toothache *and* was on the rag at the same time. if you know what i mean, and i think you do.

somebody drag it back into the water, and leave it there.

Asking If they’re fake is like asking if she has orgasms. who cares?

skank

Yes, indeed Mizike. I’d love to pound her in the ass.

Busted. Tits can only do so much for a guy. I love big yammers, but not with an accompanying face like hers.

I can see why she doesn’t want the focus on her face./would still hit it though

Butterface. /can’t believe no one said it yet

She’ll make a great intern some day.

she would suck the chrome off a trailer hitch….or a golf ball through a garden hose..trust me. How do these get through?

I’d hit it like a Korean whore in China.

I think my wang moved a little… wait… no it didn’t.
/yeah, I guess I’d still hit it. Good for a poke if the tele’s broke as they say.

These are just a few in reference to two women who were ‘judged’ by the men. Want to hear what they have to say about Britney Spears?

i’m not a big fan of spears, but big stars end up being role models to 14 year olds, so hopefully her busting outta her bra will inspire, this generation of 14y/o to be mega-cleavage showing sluts.

Does anyone else think the Olsen twins are hot? Does it matter to anyone that they’re only like 15?

I can’t wait until Britney’s all washed up… You know she’ll be taking it all off once her music career is over.. 😉

I want to know if she swallow, spit or gargle.

She is just a trailer trash girl who needs to be barefoot and preg…..

What a brainless sack of meat. She has the potential to be a fark puppet (as long as she doesn’t open her mouth to speak) or an organ bank (until the parts run out), but sadly, nothing much besides that.

If I can’t pin her ankles behind her ears and drive the ol’ skin bus into tuna town, the terrorists have already won.

now this is dirty. Mmmmmmm. hot little hussy, tempting us all with those virginal gazes whilst wrapped up in slutsville

I don’t get it, Maybe if you put a bag over her face then I might do her, but dang she ugly

I wish she’d turn into a porn star already and just become cum fodder and yesterdays news.

There are hundreds more of them, thousands more, each of them more despicable than the last. And you know what? I suspect that if you took any one of them aside and told them that they were misogynist idiots they’d argue with you until they were blue in the face. Why? Because pornography blurs that line so much that they believe, most likely with all their heart, that they ‘like’ women. In fact, they’ll look at a phrase like “Maybe if you put a bag over her face then I might do her” as a compliment. Oh, and please don’t use the tired line that they’re ‘just’ internet trolls and they’re not really like that. I’ve done plenty of posts on that topic before.

Of course, despite what they want you to believe their comments and attitudes say differently don’t they? Nah, porn doesn’t change the male outlook on women…not at all *snark*.

But what of lesbians? You know, women who love other women. Women who don’t want anything to do with men sexually? How in the hell can they be affected by male porn usage? Well, gentle readers, I’ve done posts on this before. Here’s a link –The Lesbian Caricature as well as another post that goes into Lesbianism for men.

Even lesbians are being pulled into male pornography, the control that men must exert on a woman who has no desire to be with men results in the proliferation of men wanting to see, “real lesbians” and “lesbian women fucking women” (sitemeter searches). Even lesbians, that group of women who have no desire to be with men, are affected by pornography and male usage of it. They are at once fetishized, feared and hated.

Finally, we have women who watch pornography. To that all I can say is that other feminist bloggers have done excellent articles on what it did to them as well (For those who have done those articles, I can’t find the links right now. If you want to, could you repost them in the comments?) I’ve done my story about how pornography affected me, as a female. It’s not much different from the stories of other radical bloggers.

Quite simply, women are affected by male use of pornstitution and they are affected by female use of pornstitution. From the catcalls and stares to the porn in the workplace. Lesbians, single women, even separatists are affected because pornography changes the people whom it touches. The expectations of men change, the expectations for women change. Porn props up harassment and objectification and if you, as a man or a woman, think that porn isn’t affecting your outlook on sex, women, or the world, then you are sadly mistaken.

Perhaps, instead of insisting that YOU are above the influences of pornography, you instead think about ways that you have been affected by it. Because you have been affected by it and therefore each and every single woman who comes into contact with you, whether it’s the stranger who’s tits you stared at in the store, or the fat woman who’s weight you criticized or the co-worker who was exposed to you and your buddies talking about the HOTTT strippers you saw the night before, YOU are affected. And, in turn, you affect those women around you who are already bombarded with images, movies, commercials and so on that marginalizes and objectifies them.

Next time you have a sexual thought, see what influence pornography has played in creating that thought. The next time you think about that woman’s ass in the store ask yourself why you’ve put so much emphasis on her ass to begin with. The next time you criticize that woman who is overweight and who is eating a piece of cake, ask yourself why you believe you have a right to criticize her. Ask yourself what she ‘should’ look like and why you believe that you have a right to determine what any woman ‘should’ look like. The next time a woman is eating an ice cream cone in front of you and you think about whether she’d be good at giving you head, ask yourself where that comes from.